


I Can't Quite Put My Finger On It... It's Not Ringing a Bell

by kowaidesuka



Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drunken Shenanigans, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Miscommunication, this is pure self-indulgence tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21630076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kowaidesuka/pseuds/kowaidesuka
Summary: Most of his proposal practice, however, was spent with him reciting his speech in his head, the words swimming in his mind so much that he often dreamt of proposing to Lyon, the visions so lifelike he woke up most days disappointed that the ring did not actually make it onto his boyfriend’s finger.Maybe he was just making excuses for himself, but… it never seemed like the perfect time.
Relationships: Ephraim & Lyon (Fire Emblem), Ephraim/Lyon (Fire Emblem)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	I Can't Quite Put My Finger On It... It's Not Ringing a Bell

**Author's Note:**

> Uhhh it's like that meme where one half of your OTP goes, "I forgot to propose last night!" except probably much worse.
> 
> Inspired by ephlyon duo conversation heading into the territory of a marriage proposal. "If only the two of us could rule together..." y'all are embarrassing.

Something in his head, a nagging urge in the depths of his mind, urged Ephraim to point at the screen and blurt out, “So what do you think?” He gestured at the TV just as the scene changed from Robin’s defiant figure, clad in a feathery silver dress, to an aisle flooded with water, the venue for Lissa’s wedding.

Lyon frowned, tilting his head. “I think… it’d be very hard to clean that up?” he replied, perplexed.

“No,” he tried again, “not just the water, like-” He gestured wildly again. “The whole thing. Wedding. Marriage. For us.” At his boyfriend’s shocked, flustered expression, Ephraim immediately wanted to slap himself. What was he thinking? The point of putting on a silly movie like Crazy Rich Ylisseans was to help Lyon unwind for a few hours and not think about his thesis. Not freak him out over something else. Hell, even Ephraim was a little freaked out over his own words… truthfully, he wasn’t opposed to the idea though.

“Well, actually… I’d be happy,” Lyon admitted, to Ephraim’s surprise. “I’d be lying if I hadn’t thought about it. I mean, we’ve known each other for so long and we’ve been together for a while…” The pink flush that had spread across his cheeks came back, although this time accompanied by a soft smile. “So um, someday, for us… yes. Only if you want to, that is,” he added hastily.

“Oh, I want to, trust me,” he said without thinking once more. And once again, it paid off, as his boyfriend pecked him on the lips and snuggled further in his arms with a happy hum, replying, “I want to as well.”

And so Ephraim, keeping that moment in the back of his mind, started planning. Two months saving up for a ring; with Lyon’s thesis presentation and graduation ceremony imminent, he was unaware of Ephraim’s sudden cost-cutting habits, and newfound intuition for finding the best deals for eating outside. Buying said ring, using L’Arachel and her love for jewellery and dragging others on a shopping spree as an excuse in case Lyon asked any questions, which thankfully he didn’t (L’Arachel cooed over the ring design he had picked out, and he was so glad she warned him beforehand to take one of his old rings for sizing). 

An embarrassing amount of time, in his opinion, was spent in trying to compose the right words to say for his proposal; after all, his boyfriend was incredibly well spoken, and deserved a fitting declaration of love to follow. But Eirika, upon finding out, slapped him lightly (her words, not his) on the back of his head and told him to use his own words, to lay out in his voice why exactly he loved Lyon.

Then came all the practicing for the special moment. Sometimes he rehearsed his speech in real life, with his buddies Kyle and Forde as his test dummies. Kyle would always give him a flat-out “No.” which amused him more than putting him off, but Forde was much more theatrical in his approach, responding with the most outlandish things in a wide range of accents. Most of his proposal practice, however, was spent with him reciting his speech in his head, the words swimming in his mind so much that he often dreamt of proposing to Lyon, the visions so lifelike he woke up most days disappointed that the ring did not actually make it onto his boyfriend’s finger.

Maybe he was just making excuses for himself, but… it never seemed like the perfect time. Graduation came and went, then Lyon’s birthday… Ephraim had thought about it, but ultimately decided against it, wanting the festivities to focus on his boyfriend and not _them_ together. Then followed Ephraim and Eirika’s birthday a few months later and… well first of all it was a bit weird to propose at one’s own birthday party, wasn’t it? And again, it was partly Eirika’s day too, no matter how much she rooted for him to just pop the question already, and joked that the best present Lyon could give him that year was to accept his ring. A slew of romantic dates in between, but none of them ever presented a moment that felt like ‘the right one’, that screamed for him to get down on one knee.

No, the gopher present in Ephraim’s head, in place of a functioning brain, thought that the right moment was Lyon struggling to get him into bed after he had about four too many beers at Tana and Innes’ annual summer beach party. The issue was however, this was probably the one time (doubled as the singular, most critical time in his mind currently) where he couldn’t remember a single word he wrote down, all those months ago.

“You’re so great… I love you...” he mumbled out, trying to remember what exactly he said. “You’re like… stars, man…”

“Stars? Are you seeing stars right now?” Lyon asked him worriedly, as he finally managed to push Ephraim onto the mattress.

“Yeah… and it’s _you_.”

His boyfriend laughed at that. “Okay, okay. Something tells me you’re going to need a jug of water when you wake up. Be right back.” As he left for the kitchen, Ephraim struggled once more to remember what the hell he wrote. Maddeningly, he had thrown the paper away many weeks prior to this, after proudly deeming that he remembered everything on the page, so why keep it around? _Stupid past me,_ he scolded himself.

“Lyon,” he called out, rather frantically, feeling the urge to sleep starting to eat away at him, as the lavender-haired man returned with a water jug and glass in his hands. “I have… I have something I gotta tell you.”

“You can tell me in the morning,” he reassured him soothingly, stroking his hair back from his forehead. “It _is_ rather late right n-”

“No, it has to be now,” he interjected, taking his hand and tugging at it. Puzzled, Lyon walked all the way around to the other side of the bed and climbed on, legs crossed, hovering over Ephraim. “Okay… what’s up?”

“It’s _important_ ,” he insisted.

“I’m a little worried now, but okay…” He reached out to take Ephraim's hand in his own, squeezing it gently.

Screw it. Ephraim was sick of beating around the bush. Tongue muddled in his drunken and sleepy state, he garbled out, “I love… I _love_ you… willyoumarryme…”

To his relief and joy, overwhelming him to the point where he could start crying if he wasn’t about to pass out, Lyon beamed and said, “Yes, yes. I love you too.”

Ephraim woke up dazed, with a pounding in his head and a fiance sleeping on his chest. _Not the worst way to wake up,_ was his first thought, accompanied by his second thought, _Ouch_. Forgoing the cup placed right next to the water, he took the jug and started gulping it down, the action causing Lyon to stir from his sleepy haze. “Ephraim…” he protested half-heartedly. “We talked about this…”

Putting the jug down, he mumbled out, “Sorry,” before shifting the both of them closer to the other side of the bed, away from the crack in the blinds that filled his eyes with sunlight. Shimmying his body down and even closer, he bumped his nose against Lyon playfully, looking to his eyes and saying, “Hey.”

“Hi.” His fiance smiled back, a sight Ephraim never grew tired of. He so, so looked forward to waking up to the sight, to his face every morning. Not that there was much doubt that he wouldn’t, it’s just that… marriage seemed so _real_ , so _definitive_. 

_Like a verification mark for your relationship,_ the gopher in his head supplied helpfully.

Kissing his fiance on the lips for the first time, he whispered out, “How about I cook us some breakfast, huh?”

Lyon laughed, and replied, “How about we _both_ stay away from the stove, like we should, and I just heat up the leftovers Tana gave us last night?”

“Yeah, that sounds better,” he agreed. Something seemed a little off about him, as he watched Lyon stumble out of bed, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what.

After a quick breakfast (his first breakfast with his fiance!) of day-old pizza and spring rolls, Ephraim logged on to his laptop, sitting in the armchair, while Lyon opted to curl up on the sofa with a novel he’d been meaning to finish before work and summer festivities had preoccupied most of his time. He looked over at his beloved, eyes scanning the pages, brows furrowed as he probably read something he didn’t quite like; whether it was the wording or contents itself, Ephraim wasn’t sure. Again, something seemed off, and he felt sort of like he was forgetting something, whenever he looked at Lyon… it didn’t ring any bells though.

The teal-haired man opened up a few search tabs, typing in various wedding-related keywords; he heard from several of his friends (and an eavesdropping Ismaire, the one time he went to Joshua’s for advice) that it was best to start planning sooner rather than later should Lyon said yes (which he did!).

“Would you prefer summer, fall, winter, or spring?” he asked aloud. Several of the online guides he found suggested that as a starting point for deciding on a date for the wedding.

“Um… fall I guess?” he replied absent-mindedly, eyes trained on the book. Ephraim started at that. Sure, Lyon’s favourite season was fall, but it seemed rather unconventional compared to a spring or summer wedding. And fall was only three months away! Ephraim was okay with working under pressure, but planning a wedding in three months definitely seemed implausible. _Unless he meant the fall of next year?_ Another link he clicked on detailed that the average engagement lasted around 15 to 16 months. Huh. _Maybe he looked up some wedding stuff, after I passed out last night?_ he mused.

“Good choice,” he commended, scrolling through the guide some more. 

“Thanks?”

“Hmmm… what about the cake?”

“Cake? Um… well, you like cheesecake?”

“Cheesecake,” he said thoughtfully, searching up ‘wedding cheesecake’. “Oh wow. I never knew they made them for weddings.”

Lyon looked up from his book in surprise. “Wedding? Whose wedding?”

“Um…” His fiance did joke quite a bit (more and more in recent years, much to Ephraim’s relief and happiness) but playing dumb was never his style. “Ours?”

The lavender-haired man looked shocked, dropping the book from his hands. His empty, unadorned hand. “ _What?_ ”

“Oh!” Ephraim exclaimed, finally realising what was missing. “I forgot to give you the ring. I knew I was forgetting something.”

“ _Ephraim_ ,” Lyon squeaked out, “aren’t you forgetting something else? Like an _entire proposal_?!”

Okay, now he was the confused one. “No, no, I definitely remember doing at least _that_ ,” he corrected, frowning. “Remember, I said I had something important to tell you?”

“Yes, you said you loved me, and then mumbled something incoherently! … Oh.” Lyon covered his mouth with his hands, mortified. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Ephraim, I must have not heard you, I-”

“Hold up,” he interrupted. The words in his speech! It had come back to him just now. Rushing to the bedroom and digging through his varsity jacket pocket to fish out the velvet box that had been taunting him for all these months, Ephraim practically sprinted back to the living room, back to his not-quite-yet-but-hopefully-soon fiance. “Okay, okay, this is good. Okay?” he said reassuringly, “Let’s just think of this as Take 2, okay?” And he got down on one knee, making Lyon gasp and sit up, tears glistening in his eyes. Somehow, despite all his nerves he felt when fake-proposing to his friends, or mulling over his words in his sleep, he felt good this time. It felt good. It felt _right_.

“Lyon, you’re my oldest, and dearest friend, and I’ve loved you since probably before I even knew what love was, really,” Ephraim began. "You've been a great part of my life, one of the few constants in my life, a bright vision guiding me, dazzling me with just how smart, and kind, and beautiful you are.” Lyon choked back a sob at that, the sound compelling Ephraim himself to start tearing up. “It only hit me a year ago, when I thought back to when we went on that camping trip in 10th grade, remember? That you reminded me so much of stars in the night sky.” He laughed a little, voice cracking. “I just want you to stay in my life, forever and always. So… will you make me the happiest man in the world and marry me?”

“Yes!” Lyon exclaimed, tears flowing freely down his face. He knelt down on to the floor, right in front of him, pulling him firmly into a fierce, drawn-out kiss. “Yes,” he repeated in a gasp, moments later, when they broke apart for air.

“But,” he continued, as Ephraim took hold of his left hand to slip the ring gently on his middle finger, “I’d like to amend your previous statement.”

“What?” he asked.

“You made _me_ the happiest man in the world by asking to marry me,” Lyon said, chuckling and sniffling.

And Ephraim had to admit, his second, his real first kiss, night spent, and breakfast with his fiance was even better than the last.


End file.
